Original subtitles

[upbeat music]

In Montmartre, at the beginning

of the last century, penniless artists

led bohemian, carefree, and tumultuous lives.

Among these were Max Jacob, his close friend Pablo Picasso,

the poet Guillaume Apollinaire,

and the painters Georges Braque,

Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and many others.

They admired and envied one another,

while waiting to be discovered.

Picasso unpacked his brushes in a former

piano factory called the Bateau-Lavoir.

Fernande Olivier, his great love moved in with him.

Apollinaire too, found his muse, a 20 year old painter

by the name of Marie Laurencin.

Success finally came knocking at the Bateau-Lavoir.

Gertrude Stein, an eccentric American collector,

posed for Picasso, and Cezanne's dealer, Ambroise Vollard,

bought a number of his paintings.

But Picasso had a rival, the painter Henri Matisse,

known for his no-frills lifestyle,

and his scandalous, vibrantly colored works.

But Pablo was determined to have the last laugh.

[calm music]

After months of trials and preparatory sketches,

Picasso placed the tip of his proverbial brush

to Matisse's throat.

Some thought that Matisse had gone too far,

but Picasso would prove that he hadn't gone far enough.

The break, the real break with the past, would be his.

In November 1906, Picasso set to work.

The few visitors allowed into the studio

discovered sketches of a sailor in a brothel.

Gradually the sailor disappeared,

and the painting turned into something else entirely.

[calm music]

By the time it was completed, it showed five women,

four of whom were standing, nude.

The faces of the two central figures

bore the mark of Iberian statuettes exhibited at the Louvre.

The character to the left, and especially

the two figures to the right, that of African masks.

The women's bodies were dismembered,

fashioned with sharp angles, big feet, fat hands,

breasts that jutted out, or no breasts at all,

flattened, twisted noses, their movements ungainly,

their harsh geometry prefiguring cubism.

When the work was finally completed,

the painter opened the doors of his studio.

Everyone was dumbfounded. No one understood.

Even Guillaume Apollinaire, who was always eager

to defend modern art's audacity

didn't write a word about the painting.

Max Jacob, too, was silent on the subject.

Only Gertrude Stein defended the artist,

but only half-heartedly.

[calm piano music]

Rumors nonetheless spread through the art world.

In Montmartre, an artist has created a scandalous work

like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

Even his friends disapproved of it.

This disapproval piqued the curiosity of a 23 year old

dealer of German origin, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.

Several months earlier, his family had given him

25000 gold francs, but with one condition.

The young man would have one year

to prove himself, or else return home.

The dealer immediately recognized the major break,

"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," represented

in the history of painting.

Something new had just been born,

more than a style, a revolution.

Fascinated, he wanted to buy it.

Picasso refused, he would only let the dealer

purchase some preparatory sketches.

"I'll be back," he firmly declared.

He wanted a way in.

The Bernheims were the dealers for Matisse,

Durand-Ruel for the impressionists,

Vollard for Cezanne, Gauguin, and the Nabis.

[knocking on door]

Kahnweiler was intent on playing in the big leagues,

and Picasso would be his calling card.

Until, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,"

few had criticized Picasso's works.

His studio was like a laboratory where ideas,

points of view, and innovations were exchanged

in an extraordinary spirit of artistic camaraderie.

But Picasso was its demiurge.

He pulled the strings of all the marionettes around him.

Van Dongen was excommunicated for his

high society friends and low artistic standards.

Juan Gris met with a similar fate.

At the Bateau-Lavoir, no other Spaniard

was allowed to outshine Picasso.

Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire,

and the poet Andre Salmon competed for the master's favor.

But Max Jacob was by far the unhappiest of the bunch.

He was knocked off the pedestal of poetry by Apollinaire,

the pedestal of love by Fernande Olivier,

and soon the pedestal of art by Braque.

Max suffered. He was consumed by jealousy.

When in 1909, Kahnweiler published Guillaume Apollinaire's,

"The Putrid Enchanter," with 32 woodcuts by Derain,

Max wept like a child.

Why him and not me?

Why does Pablo only laugh with Guillaume?

And why isn't he interested in my writing?

Why doesn't he stop by

to say hello when he's in Montmartre?

While Picasso grew richer,

and Apollinaire more famous, he was shortlisted

for the Goncourt Prize for, "The Heresiarch & Co,"

Max was still confined to the playground.

[somber music] [children playing]

Max wept. His friend had made it big.

Ever since Vollard bought his paintings,

since Kahnweiler had taken an interest in him,

Picasso had forgotten his old friends,

and the connection they had forged in tough times.

Even worse, he was moving house!

Five years after discovering the Bateau-Lavoir,

Picasso moved out.

The movers who transported the little furniture

they had to the new apartment

on Boulevard de Clichy couldn't understand it.

By what stroke of good luck does one leave

a dingy wooden building for an upscale apartment

with a view of the Sacre Coeur on the studio side,

and a view of the tree-lined Avenue Frochot on the other?

Everything changed, even the furniture.

The bedroom was a real bedroom,

and the bed a real bed with copper bars.

The crystal and china were proudly displayed,

and to top it all off, they had a maid.

Gertrude Stein found them the rare creature.

Mrs. Picasso paid her 40 francs a month,

and gave her a room containing a round table

and a large walnut-stained wardrobe,

and the best of the furniture from the Bateau-Lavoir.

Picasso became irritable in his new home.

He took refuge in his studio,

a sort of reconstructed Bateau-Lavoir.

He insisted on eating healthy foods,

fish, vegetables, and fruits.

[contemplative music]

He began a diet. He drank more water than wine.

He went out less, and with less enthusiasm.

His good cheer only returned on Sundays

when his friends stopped by,

especially Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob.

For Picasso only had to call and Max would come running,

and happiness was restored.

[train engine rumbling]

In 1911, Picasso left Paris for the tiny Catalonian village

of Ceret, situated in the Eastern Pyrenees.

There, among the fruit trees, the countryside,

and the old houses, he found himself again.

He stayed in a quiet house in the heart of the mountains.

He invited his friends.

Braque and Fernande arrived from Paris,

followed by Max, whose journey he paid for.

The poet was in Heaven.

Apollinaire, who had stayed behind in Paris,

wasn't there to overshadow him.

Evenings, they were reminded of

the spirit of Montmartre in the local village cafes.

Days, everyone worked. Max painted and wrote verse.

Of all the Bateau-Lavoir painters,

Braque was the most loyal to Picasso.

The Spaniard hadn't forgotten what Apollinaire told him.

Matisse had rejected Braque at the Salon d'Automne,

the same man who had himself stirred up

so much controversy only three years earlier.

Braque and Picasso had had a close bond ever since.

They spent all their time together,

much to the dismay of Max, who had to admit

he was no match for Braque when it came to painting.

However, he was the first to recognize that

the two painters were comparable to mountain climbers,

blazing a trail up the mountain of Modern Art.

In 1908, the two artists had begun to paint

distorted bodies and objects,

in an early form of cubism influenced by Cezanne.

Analytic cubism, the second stage

of their experimentation, was a joint project.

Instead of the play of light and shadow,

these paintings represented objects with volume and depth

seen from many angles simultaneously.

They used broken lines, a reduced pallet of colors,

and a flattened sense of perspective.

The problem was that the subject was

on the verge of vanishing altogether.

It took a good eye to find the faces,

objects, or instruments hiding in this strictly

monochromic world of grays and ochers.

Max could stare and stare, but still not make out much.

[contemplative music]

In the fall of 1910,

Picasso sat Kahnweiler down in front of his easel.

The poses lasted for many hours,

but the work was incomprehensible.

By adding a few recognizable details,

a shadow behind an ear, the bridge of the nose,

the hint of a hairstyle, folded hands,

Max and many others were able to conclude

that Picasso had painted a man.

Finally, a painting of something recognizable.

In 1911, in Ceret, Braque and Picasso introduced other

identifiable details into their common work.

For example, a letter, a word, a number, or a musical note.

These signs were stenciled

onto the canvas, and then enameled.

They expressed a mental representation of the subject.

These works included Braque's, "The Portuguese,"

and Picasso's, "Man with a Violin."

The following year, Picasso introduced a piece of oilcloth

and a length of rope into the painting,

"Still Life with Chair Caning."

Increasingly, the two companions inserted press clippings,

and fragments of wallpaper into their works.

Finally, they executed paper, iron and cardboard sculptures

using recovered materials crudely arranged,

and then painted over to represent

an everyday object or still life.

The connection between these two artists ran so deep

that neither Max nor Ferdinand,

nor anyone else for that matter,

could figure out who had painted what.

And to complicate matters, the paintings weren't signed.

Where was Braque? Where was Picasso?

[phone ringing]

The band was in Ceret,

when Picasso got a phone call from Paris.

On the line, Guillaume Apollinaire

called the troops back home.

They were to return to Paris immediately.

The news could have grave repercussions.

It all came from the August 21st, 1911, "Petit Parisien."

The paper ran a shocking headline.

The Mona Lisa had been stolen from the Louvre.

"What's that got to do with me?" Picasso asks.

500 miles north, Apollinaire explained.

A Belgian swindler by the name of Gery-Pieret

had claimed responsibility for the theft of the Mona Lisa,

along with three Iberian statuettes.

Two of them were in Picasso's studio.

"What are the chances?" exclaimed the painter.

Four years earlier, Gery-Pieret,

who was Apollinaire's friend, sold Picasso

two of the Iberian heads, fifty francs for the lot.

At that time, the Louvre was a sieve.

Joking, Picasso had once casually said to Marie Laurencin,

"I'm going to the Louvre.

Want me to bring you back something?"

The writer Roland Dorgeles had placed a bust

by one of his sculptor friends in an antiquities gallery.

And for several weeks, no one was the wiser.

Only a few days before the disappearance of the Mona Lisa,

Apollinaire himself wrote in, "The Intransigeant,"

The Louvre is more poorly guarded than a Spanish museum.

What's the worst case scenario,

asked Picasso with a hint of worry.

Well, I put you in touch with Gery-Pieret,

answered Apollinaire.

We're going home, Picasso decided. Right now.

[contemplative music]

He was afraid.

If the Louvre sleuths,

assisted by the gentlemen from the Prefecture,

went looking for the statuettes, his goose was cooked.

He was a foreigner.

At worst he faced arrest, at best expulsion.

Apollinaire, who risked a similar fate,

understood the danger very well.

The poet was in a desperate mood,

and blamed his own carelessness.

The two accomplices were faced with a single question,

how to get rid of the statuettes?

They cooked up a thousand solutions.

[contemplative music]

According to Fernande Olivier's recollection,

they finally agreed on the one that seemed the least risky,

throwing the statues into the Seine.

No sooner said than done, or almost.

Mrs. Picasso found a big suitcase,

stowed the artworks inside,

and pushed painter and poet out of the door.

[knocking on door]

When Fernande opened the door a few hours later

to find the two men standing there,

they were white as ghosts, and they still held the suitcase,

and it was still full.

Finally they made up their minds to leave

in the early morning for the Gare de l'Est.

One kept watch while the other

put the suitcase in a storage locker.

Then they informed, "Paris-Journal,"

where the statuettes are located.

24 hours later, the Louvre recovered its treasures.

A close escape.

Except it wasn't.

[dramatic music]

[beating on door]

It was the police. They had come with a search warrant.

Apollinaire was taken to

the Quai des Orfevres police station.

Accused of harboring a criminal, and accessory to robbery,

he was taken directly to the Sante Prison.

He was led through dreary corridors to cell block 11.

To my prison cell I was taken,

and there made to strip down naked

while cooed some sinister tongue,

"Guillaume, what've you become?"

He couldn't comprehend what was happening.

He was stunned. He waited.

[clock ticking]

Meanwhile, Picasso kept a low profile.

A day went by. He began to hope.

[clock ticking]

But the next morning at dawn, the doorbell rang.

It was the court police.

Picasso was taken away, arrested,

and brought before the judge.

He claimed that he had never laid eyes

on the Iberian statues, and that he wasn't interested

in sculpture, and that he didn't know any poets,

least of all this Guillaume Apollinaire the judge mentioned.

We have a witness, the judge replied.

The witness had been waiting for four hours in his cell.

He had been taken out of his hole,

and brought into the judge's chambers.

His face was haggard, his eyes red,

his removable collar was hanging by a thread.

Picasso took one look at him, and then looked away.

Do you know this man, the detective asked.

No, answered Pablo Picasso.

Guillaume Apollinaire started in his chair.

No, Picasso insisted

with the stubbornness of a cornered child.

I've never seen this gentleman before in my life.

But soon, amid the battery of questions,

he stammered, panicked, and changed his story,

while Apollinaire sat there in shock,

unable to articulate a single word.

[somber music]

From behind his desk, the judge watched

these terrified children moan and groan.

He sent Picasso home, and Apollinaire back to prison.

The same day, Gery-Pieret wrote a letter

to the prosecutor exonerating the prisoner.

And on September 12th,

Guillaume Apollinaire was finally set free.

As for the Mona Lisa,

it would be two years before it resurfaced.

It had been stolen by an Italian employee of the Louvre,

who wanted the masterpiece restored to his country.

The poet was in the dumps.

He had always been unlucky in love,

but now in friendship too?

He found a few compassionate souls to listen to him,

and they criticized Picasso.

For a time, the painter got

the cold shoulder from the poet's friends.

This fall from grace, though short lived,

was accompanied by a vague sense of paranoia.

In the street, Picasso constantly looked over his shoulder

for fear he was being followed.

And then one fine day, he saw Apollinaire's smile again.

All was forgiven.

Apollinaire was preparing to publish, "Alcools."

This collection of texts written between

1898 and 1912, did away with punctuation.

The lines of verse sufficed to give the poem its rhythm.

In it, Guillaume referred to his stay in prison,

his romances, Pope Pius X, typists, airplanes, sirens.

Guillaume Apollinaire had always wanted to be

at the forefront of the avant-garde.

In 1911, he defended a handful of painters,

who exhibited their works at the Salon des Independants,

proudly waving the cubist banner.

These included Marcel Duchamp, Delaunay,

Picabia, Gleizes, Leger, Metzinger,

and Jacques Villon, who had banded together

into a group called the Gold Section.

In Room 41, Jean Metzinger's, "Woman with a Teaspoon,"

observed visitors with her one eyed stare,

and Robert Delaunay's, "Eiffel Tower,"

sounded the death knell of classical perspective.

The most audacious of the bunch

was certainly Marcel Duchamp, whose friends had asked him

not to show, "Nude Descending a Staircase,"

which was much too daring for critics.

In 1913, Duchamp brought his painting to New York

and became the European star of the Armory Show,

a new American exhibit of contemporary art.

"Nude Descending a Staircase," shocked and impressed

as much, if not more, than his first ready mades.

While jingoist art critics were condemning cubism

as Germanic Kraut art, Apollinaire defended the cubists

of the Salon des Independents tooth, nail, and pen.

Braque and Picasso, on the other hand,

saw their work as fundamentally different

from that of the other Golden Section artists.

While they understood the modernity of, "Alcools,"

they didn't see it in the work

of those Braque called the cubisters.

Max Jacob had remained the poorest

of the former Bateau-Lavoir crowd.

While the others moved on to bigger

and more luxurious apartments, like Apollinaire

who had settled in the heart of Faubourg Saint-Germain,

he continued to live in poverty.

[water dripping]

Max published, "La Cote," a collection of Celtic songs.

He pedaled it to passing friends

and strangers he met in bistros.

It wasn't a job, just a disguised form of begging.

What was left? A few Picasso drawings.

In increasingly dire straits, Max sold them.

The payback was cruel. The painter covered him with scorn.

And there was little the poet could do

to prevent the door closing on this part of his life.

Picasso couldn't stand it when Max

reminded him of their lean years,

and the solidarity that once united them.

The Mona Lisa incident had left its scars.

The bohemian days gave way to a period of separations.

Marie Laurencin broke off with Guillaume Apollinaire.

Fernande Olivier left Picasso,

and ran off with a futurist Italian painter.

When she came back down to Earth,

she realized that the present was now a thing of the past,

for Picasso had left too.

He was with Eva.

She was 30, and a cheerful soul

despite being weakened by tuberculosis.

In order to escape Fernande,

Picasso brought his new lover to the Pyrenees.

Then he set off for Sorgues, where Braque joined them.

[contemplative music]

Fernande stayed behind.

Thus an eight year love affair ended in mediocrity.

With Fernande gone from his life, he finally left

the protective shadow of the Bateau Lavoir behind.

She had been its queen.

Her departure from the band signaled the end of an era.

[calm piano music]

Monday, March 2, 1914, at the Hotel Drouot.

Those attending included the curious,

reporters, dealers, and enlightened amateurs.

An eclectic crowd filled rooms six and seven

of the venerable art auction house.

Max Jacob was there, as was Kahnweiler,

and Picasso's closest friends.

10 years after creating their little community,

the founding members of the Peau de l'Ours

were selling off their collection.

The transactions weren't intended for speculative gain,

but to promote modern art,

and to help painters make a better living.

So what had these generous souls

bought in the last 10 years?

500 works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard,

Maillol, Dufy, Van Dongen, Vlaminck,

Derain, Matisse, Picasso, and many others.

Everyone was eager to see the cubists come to auction.

It was the first time they'd been

on the national art market.

Everyone knew that the Peau de l'Ours auction

was a decisive test for modern art.

The auctioneer brought down the gavel.

The first work, Bonnard's, "The Aquarium,"

had just fetched 720 Francs.

Vlaminck didn't do quite so well.

His, "The Locks at Bougival," sold for 170 Francs.

Gauguin's, "The Cellist," went for 4000 Francs,

as did Van Gogh's, "Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass."

With, "Study of a Nude and The Sea in Corsica,"

Matisse started off at 900 Francs.

"Leaves by the Waterside," went for over 2000 Francs,

and, "Bowl of Apples and Oranges,"

doubled expectations, fetching 5000 Francs,

even better than Van Gogh.

The audience applauded. But Picasso hadn't spoken yet.

The paintings acquired by Andre Level and his friends

predated his cubist works, but that mattered little.

It was the man, his innovative spirit,

that was being judged, not the blue or rose periods.

When the auctioneer opened the bidding

on the first Picasso sketch, "Woman and Children,"

he was unwittingly burying Montmartre, and the era

of splendid artists awaiting their hour of glory.

For the hour had arrived.

"Woman and Children," sold for 1,100 francs.

"L'Homme a la Houppelande," went for 1,350 francs.

"The Three Dutchwomen," reached 5,200 francs.

The crowd went wild. That was more than Matisse.

Then a giant canvas was placed on the stage,

"Family of Saltimbanques, 1905."

The starting price was 8000 Francs.

Five years earlier, Andre Level

had bought it for 1000 francs.

The bidding started, and quickly went sky high,

with some bidders enthusiastic, others furious.

The spiteful critics were already sharpening their pencils.

And when the auctioneer's gavel finally hit the table,

it was like a death blow to the old order.

The painting had fetched 11,500 gold francs,

the most expensive work sold that day.

The gossips, and there were many, noted that the dealer

who bought, "L'Homme a la Houppelande,"

and, "Family of Saltimbanques,"

was a German, Justin Thannhauser.

Anti-German sentiment had been running high in France,

and the art world was no exception.

Max Jacob pushed his way through the crowd.

He had to tell Picasso the news.

The painter had raked in a quarter

of the day's earnings all by himself.

Finally free of the crowd,

Max hopped into a cab to find Picasso,

for Picasso wasn't there, he hadn't come.

And where was he, in this, his finest hour?

Not in Clichy, and not in Montmartre either.

Like Cesar in his way, who had left

his artistic birthplace and braved the Rubicon,

Picasso had crossed the Seine.

Picasso was no longer at the Bateau-Lavoir.

He was on the left bank, in Montparnasse.

[calm music]

[glass bulb exploding]

[strong wind blowing] [thunder rumbling]

June 28th, 1914.

Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was killed

by the bullets of a Serbian fanatic.

On July 28th, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

On the 31st, Germany issued

an ultimatum to France and Russia.

The same day, socialist leader Jean-Jaures was assassinated.

On August the first, France announced general mobilization.

[bell ringing]

The next day, beneath a blazing sun,

French troops marched out of the Ecole militaire,

and other barracks around Paris.

Cheerful, with their helmets cocked to one side,

the troops march up the avenues,

swords and bayonets clanking,

and converged at the train stations.

The marching cuirassiers, cavalry men, gunners,

and infantrymen shared a single battle cry, to Berlin.

They expected to come home carrying

the Kaiser's scalp by the end of the week.

[dramatic music]

At the beginning of the month of August,

the Italian writer, Ricciotto Canudo,

and his Swiss friend, Blaise Cendrars,

issued an appeal to all foreigners living in France.

Foreign friends of France who, during their stay

have learned to love it like a second home,

feel the pressing need to offer her their arms.

Foreign born intellectuals, students, workers,

and able-bodied men of all sorts,

we who have found material nourishment here in France,

let us gather in a solid group of good will,

to offer our services for the good of the greatest France.

On August the third, nearly 100,000 foreigners

gathered at rue Saint-Dominique

to enlist in the Foreign Legion.

Then, marching orders in hand,

they rushed to the market at Temple

to buy hoods, trousers, and pea jackets

that they would transform into military attire.

In a matter of weeks, the former residents

of the Bateau-Lavoir had separated forever.

At the Avignon station, Pablo Picasso

said goodbye to Braque and Derain.

Braque, wounded at the Battle of Carency,

would be trepanned and then demobilized in 1916.

Derain would participate in

the massacre at Verdun, and Chemin des Dames.

[train whistle blows]

[contemplative music]

[calm music] [children playing]

Which members of the Montmartre gang were still in Paris?

The meager contingent included those,

like Picasso, who rejected the army,

and those, like Max Jacob, whom the army rejected.

Guillaume Apollinaire, for his part,

enlisted in the early days of the war.

But when one was born in Rome to

a Polish mother, and an absent father,

wearing the nation's colors wasn't so simple.

[birds singing]

While waiting for his marching orders,

the poet joined some friends in Nice.

There, at a seaside restaurant,

a young 30 year old woman caught his eye.

She was dark, pretty, and lively.

All she had to do was bat her eyes,

and the poet forgot all about Marie Laurencin.

Guillaume made inquires.

Married at age 23 then divorced,

her noble name suggested an adventuress.

Louise de Coligny-Chatillon.

On the one hand, she played at being a volunteer nurse.

On the other, she remained a social butterfly,

and an emancipated young woman.

Apollinaire waited and hoped.

The day after their first meeting,

he declared his passion and love to her.

Five days later, he had all his books sent to her.

He promised to write one especially for her.

[brass gong humming]

They met soon after in a house where opium was smoked,

then in seaside restaurants and deserted beaches.

Everywhere except a hotel.

Each time Guillaume suggested one,

Louise murmured that they were friends,

and that they should leave it at that.

[door shutting]

When she was stretched out with an opium pipe in her mouth,

she would offer her hand and a few promises,

all of which was woefully insufficient.

After two months of this,

Apollinaire was running out of steam.

He expedited his enlistment,

and prepared for the big departure.

The day after his enlistment,

Louise showed up at the door of his barracks.

She asked for Guillaume Kostrowitzky,

second gunner driver of the 78th battalion

of the 38th artillery regiment.

He greeted her.

They went to the hotel and spent nine nights there.

[crickets chirping] [calm music]

Then, Apollinaire did his basic training.

[feet marching] [calm music]

He learned to ride a horse, discovered the joys of drills,

the drudgery of soup duty, and roll call.

In his letters to Lou,

he hid no detail of his lowly soldier's life.

He reassured her the war wouldn't last more than a year.

[mortars exploding]

The night draws shut, and Gui follows up his dream,

where everything is Lou, and war is naught.

The stars wink, and the hay lays golden,

and he thinks on she whom he loves.

When Lou didn't answer his letters quickly enough,

the desperate gunner would whine,

and remind her of their nights of lovemaking.

His sweetheart, alas, seemed to be losing interest.

Her passion was fading.

The poet was still loaded with desire,

but opposite, there was no artillery fire.

Lou was drifting away, like all the others.

[engine starts and rumbles]

So the poet decided to look elsewhere.

Elsewhere, was at the bosom of a young girl

he met in a train in January, 1915.

Her name was Madeleine, she was very young, not even 20.

But she had long eyelashes. Nothing wagered, nothing gained.

Apollinaire sent a postcard to the stranger,

expressing his deepest respects, and a kiss on the hand.

Two weeks later, in the postmaster's bag

there was a package for him, a box of cigars.

This was enough so that his future letters

were no longer addressed to Mademoiselle,

but to My Little Fairy,

and then My Dearest Little Fairy a few days later.

Finally in an enraptured sigh,

the artilleryman began to stake his claim.

I loved you from the first moment I saw you.

Meanwhile, those who had stayed in Paris,

far from the front,

watched the soldiers on leave with curiosity.

Their euphoria was only a mask.

One morning, while strolling near the Tuileries gardens,

Max Jacob and Picasso noticed a small crowd gathering

in an alley where pieces of heavy artillery were on display.

The canons and mortars had been painted over

with black and yellow stripes.

Picasso studied the decorations carefully,

and then exclaimed, we did that.

We, meaning the cubists.

At the beginning of the war, in Pont-a-Mousson,

on the Eastern front, a telephone operator

was told to transmit orders to fire the cannon.

No sooner had the cannon been fired,

than an enemy shell blew it up.

This made the operator wonder,

why not protect men and artillery

by camouflaging them in realistic colors.

The telephone operator was a painter

by the name of Lucien Guirand de Scevola.

He shared his idea with his commanding officers.

In February, the Ministry of War agreed

to put together a team working under his direction.

Who did Scevloa call first? The cubists of course.

Only they were capable of representing

an object from all possible angles,

not just the viewpoint of whoever was observing it.

And so it was that the cubists

invented the first camouflage in military history.

These painters and sculptors,

who had been seen as champions of Kraut art in 1914,

began painting fake scenery behind the lines.

They painted realistically colored leaves

on allied helmets and canons.

They hid observation and artillery towers

behind fake ruins, chimneys, bails of hay,

and hand-painted human and animal corpses.

[contemplative music]

Braque, but also Camoin, Dufresne, Dunoyer de Segonzac,

Roger de la Fresnay, Marcoussis, Moreau, Jacques Villon

joined in the defense of the nation in various ways.

[military cadence music]

In November 1915,

Apollinaire volunteered for the general infantry.

He was named second lieutenant

in the 96th infantry regiment.

The poet had become a solider.

[bomb explodes]

[guns firing] [calm music]

He discovered flares, cannons, and machine guns.

He discovered the horrors of life in the trenches.

He was on the front lines, stretched out

on the bloody ground, the cannon breathing down his neck.

He slept in the mud, if at all. He shivered.

He washed when he could,

and endured shells and shrapnel, and gas attacks.

The barbed wire ate into his skin,

as did the vermin and lice.

He protected himself behind

sacks of sand or human body parts.

He learned to dig foxholes,

and rebuild at night like a caveman in the darkness.

[contemplative music]

His comrades were falling one after another.

From the front, Apollinaire sent a letter to Madeleine

in which he begged her to wait for him

if he were taken prisoner.

He thought about death of course, but he wasn't afraid.

He never complained.

When it came time to fight,

he was the first to leap from the trenches.

He showed remarkable courage.

His men loved him because he protected them,

and made sure they had enough to eat,

shared his fire and his care packages,

and lent them his blankets when they were drier than theirs.

Kostrowitzky was too hard to pronounce,

so they called him Cointreau-whisky.

Submerged by the tumult of war, Cointreau-whisky fought.

When he had a free moment, he wrote to Madeleine.

There's a ship that has sailed away with my love.

There are six sausages that look like maggots in the sky

that will hatch into stars.

There's an enemy submarine that is out to get my love.

There are 1000 little pines,

splintered by the bursting shells around me.

There's a soldier passing by, blinded by asphyxiating gas.

There's everything we've torn to pieces

in the guts of Nietzsche, Goethe, and Cologne.

There's me longing for a letter from Madeleine.

There are photos of my love in my wallet.

There are the prisoners who pass by with worried faces.

There's a young woman thinking of me in Oran.

There is a canon whose crew is busy with its parts.

There's the post master who comes trotting

down the road of the lonesome tree.

There's a spy, they say,

that prowls here like the invisible horizon,

which he dresses in and vanishes into.

[dramatic music]

March 17th, 1916, near Berry-au-Bac, in the bois des Buttes,

Apollinaire stretched a canvas tarp

above the parapet of his trench,

and made himself as comfortable as he could in the mud.

From the pocket of his overcoat, he took out a pad and pen.

My dearest little fairy.

He made Madeleine heir to all his belongings,

replacing Lou, to whom the poet-soldier

had bequeathed everything several months earlier.

[incoming bomb whines then explodes]

[somber music]

Apollinaire brought his hand to his head.

There was a hole in his helmet,

and something warm trickled down his cheek, blood.

[somber music]

In a poetic flash, Guillaume thought of this phrase

from his Calligrammes which he had engraved

on his toothpaste kit during basic training.

Oh how lovely war is.

The poet swayed, could he have been this wrong?

Before losing consciousness, he called for help.

Falling to the ground, mortar fire burst overhead,

as lovely as fireworks.

[mortars exploding]

[contemplative music]